For my doctoral thesis and first book, I explored dynamics of death, renewal and community through the focus on changes in Sufi communities. I spent twenty-three months (between 2016 and 2019) in Kabul and Herat conducting ethnographic field research and interviews in six urban Sufi communities. In my book I explore the dexterity of religious civil society in Afghanistan to navigate complex and shifting social environments, especially in transitional moments such as the death of a leader. As the first ethnographic monograph in the post 2001 era to examine Afghan Sufi communities from an anthropological perspective, the book explores how the necessity to adapt to conditions of an environment of war and ideological animosity changed the context in which religious authority was legitimized.

My previous research among nomads, refugees and politicians in Afghanistan investigated the social, bureaucratic and political consequences of labeling practices among pastoral and peripatetic nomads. I show how labeling practices that seem at first sight insignificant actually translate into rights and opportunities for one group at the expense of another, manifesting in access to resources, political positions or statelessness. This study earned the National Master Thesis Prize for Asian Studies in the Netherlands and the interdisciplinary Leiden University Thesis Prize.